Radio Script #1180

Little Talks on Common Things
December 3, 1978

Several times during the years that this program has been on the air it has mentioned the leading pioneer citizen of Fairfield Village, General William Kendall. About a year ago there was published, in mimeograph form, a neatly bound volume about General Kendall, his relatives, and his ancestry. It is entitled “The Kendalls of the Kennebec,” and was compiled by Donald and Christine Brown. This volume now enables me to give you more information about General Kendall and his inventive son, William, Jr.

The pioneer William Kendall was born in 1759, a fifth generation descendant of John Kendall of Cambridge, England, who was born in 1621, just a year after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. William’s father had the unusual name of Uzziah, and had been born in Boston in 1721, exactly a century after the birth of his great-great-grandfather John, founder of the American branch of the family. When the Plymouth Company, after their Kennebec Purchase in 1749, recruited settlers for their first Kennebec settlement at Powalborough, one of those who responded was Uzziah Kendall, and it was at Pownalborough, in 1759 that the fifth of his 13 children was born. That child was William Kendall.

In 1780, William, then just come to adult age of 21, bought a lot in the Nye-Dimmock survey up the river, just south of a lot already sold to Peter Pichand. As time went on Pichand’s name became changed to Pishon and that name was given to a crossing-place on the Kennebec called Pishon’s Ferry. It is the present village of Hinckley in the Town of Fairfield, and a bridge now crosses the river where the ferry once plied. Pishon’s original lot was a large one, with its southern boundary at approximately where Fairfield’s Western Avenue is now located. That line became the northern boundary of William Kendall’s lot, and it extended so far south that it included almost all of what is now Fairfield Village. This land covered 314 acres.

William Kendall had been in Fairfield only a year when he married on Christmas Day in 1782, Abigail Chase. The marriage took place at Noble’s Ferry, another old crossing a mile or more south of Pishon’s Ferry. It was near where the Skowhegan Road met the Ohio Hill Road to Fairfield Center. After the wedding, although it was late in December, the river was sufficiently free of ice that William took his bride in a canoe down to their new cabin home.

In 1784, Kendall joined with four other settlers to build a dam at the Village. That made possible the erection of a number of mills along the west bank on what is now Fairfield’s Water Street. Meanwhile Kendall had financial interest in a mill built by Jonathan Emery six miles up the river, on Jackin’s Brook, which entered the Kennebec near the Goodwin Farm. The mill was a bit up the brook near Goodwin’s Corner.

So eager was William Kendall to expand his manufacturing facilities that he mortgaged his farm to get the necessary money. It was that expansion that gave to the village the name Kendall’s Mills. Until this expansion began, both in population and business activity, what is now the town’s larges t community was greatly exceeded by Fairfield Center. There and at North Fairfield the settlements were not only older, but for some time larger. At the Center was the town’s first church and the mills on Fish Brook were much older than those at Kendall’s Mills.

With his new mills along Water Street, William Kendall also opened a general store, so that by the beginning of the 19th century he was a prosperous farmer, mill owner, and merchant. Several mills built by Kendall stood until 1836 when an organization called the Boston Company took them over, tore most of them down and erected a large factory. Only six years later the Boston Company failed and its property was taken over by five men who became prominent in Fairfield business and community life. They were William Connor, Simon Connor, John Kendall, Ezra Totman, and Nahum Totman. William Connor was an influential lumberman, sending large crews into the Moosehead woods every winter. He also was principal owner of the first bridge at Kendall’s Mills, and was the toll keeper.

When the Town of Fairfield was incorporated in 1798, the first body of selectmen was comprised of William Kendall, Elihu Bowerman and Thomas Blaisdell. William Kendall was a very active man all his life. He predicted that he wouldn’t die in bed, and his prediction proved true. On the way to his island mill on August 9, 1837, he dropped dead of heart failure.

Besides his career in Fairfield, William Kendall won distinction as a military man. At the age of 18, he enlisted as a soldier of the Revolution and served for three years in Captain Joshua Jenkins’ company of the 12th Massachusetts Battalion. He was in the Battle of Saratoga that saw the defeat of British General Burgoyne and turned the tide of the Revolution. After coming to Fairfield, Kendall served so competently in first the Massachusetts then, the Maine militia, that he was made a commanding Brigadier General. So he came honestly by the title of General Kendall.

The General’s son, William, Jr., was a most interesting man. As his father had been called General, the younger man was always called Captain Kendall., He was born in Fairfield in 1784, and in 1805 he married a relative of his mother, Sarah Chase. Like his father he had a military career, enlisting as a private in the War of 1812, serving in the 34th U.S. Infantry, and, being discharged as a first lieutenant. He, too, became interested in the state militia, where he served as a captain.

In 1817 the first of young William’s inventions appeared when he built a reaction wheel for his father’s gristmill. Its significance was that it would operate when the water was as low as 15 inches. In 1824 he built a similar but larger wheel in Waterville. Young William was also interested in firearms and is said to have produced a revolver before the Colt weapon became famous.

The account from which most of this broadcast comes tells us: “The first mill in Waterville was built by John McKechnie in 1777 where the Western Avenue pumping station now stands. By 1806 Ticonic Village had a blacksmith, a tin smith, a cabinet maker, a clock maker, a cobbler, and a wheelwright. Captain Kendall ran a sawmill on Ticonic Dam south of the present bridge. He resided near Ticonic Bridge between the residences of Moses Dalton,and John Philbrick.

Perhaps the least known of William, Jr.’s inventions was a circular saw. It gave birth to a jingle:
“Captain Bill built a mill on an iron tindle
Upon my word, he sawed a board thinner than a shingle”

That circular saw was such a novelty that it made a deep impression on visitors. One day a group of travelling entertainers came to Kendall’s Mills, charging 20 cents to see their show. Learning of that previously unheard of device, a circular saw, they came to see it in operation. Upon instruction ·from their leader, each man laid down 20 cents, and the leader said, “It is a better show to see that saw work through a log than it is to see our performance.”

On January 1,1827, the citizens of Waterville presented William Kendall, Jr. with a gold medal in appreciation of his circular saw. The presentation was made by Prof. Avery Briggs of Waterville College.

In 1840 Captain Kendall was Sheriff of Somerset County. He was a skilled inventor, but not a good businessman, neglecting
until too late to patent his inventions. He never made a fortune out of them. One of his eccentricities was to carry money and documents in his hat band. Though constantly losing those items, he would not change the habit. He was granted a soldier’s pension in 1871, but the next year he died at the age of 89 .

And that is the story of the father and son who made Kendall’s Mills the largest business center in the town of Fairfield.

Year: 1978